Benchmark: _.isEqual vs === for string comparison

HTML Preparation code:

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/lodash@4.17.4/lodash.min.js"></script>

Script Preparation code:

window.foo = 'this is a test';
window.bar = 'this is a test';

Tests:

isEqual
_.isEqual(window.foo, window.bar)
===
window.foo === window.bar

Rendered benchmark preparation results:

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Previous results

Test case name	Result
isEqual
===

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Latest run results:

Run details: (Test run date: one year ago)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/129.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Browser/OS: Chrome 129 on Mac OS X 10.15.7

View result in a separate tab

Test name	Executions per second
isEqual	2338245.2 Ops/sec
===	3572130.0 Ops/sec

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one year ago):

LLMs can make mistakes. Check important info.

Let's break down what's being tested in this benchmark.

**Benchmark Purpose**

The purpose of this benchmark is to compare the performance of two JavaScript operators for string comparison: `_.isEqual` from the Lodash library and the built-in `===` operator.

**Options Compared**

Two options are compared:

1. `_._isEqual(window.foo, window.bar)`: This uses the `_.isEqual` function from the Lodash library. The purpose of this library is to provide a utility function for comparing values in a functional programming style.
2. `window.foo === window.bar`: This uses the built-in `===` operator for comparison.

**Pros and Cons**

- **Lodash's `_isEqual`:**
  Pros:
  * Provides a clear, explicit comparison method that is easy to understand and maintain.
  * Supports more complex data structures and types of comparisons (e.g., partial matches).
  * Can be useful when you want to avoid the ambiguity of `===` with object properties or arrays.
  
  Cons:
  * Requires an external library, which might introduce additional overhead for small scripts.
  * May not provide a significant performance advantage over the built-in `===` operator.

- **Built-in `===` Operator:**
  Pros:
  * No additional libraries are required, making it simpler to include in most projects.
  * Fast and optimized for performance by the JavaScript engine.
  
  Cons:
  * Can be ambiguous or difficult to use correctly with certain data types (e.g., objects, arrays).
  * Does not provide explicit error messages if the comparison fails.

**Other Considerations**

- The benchmark does not consider the case where `foo` and `bar` are null or undefined. In JavaScript, using `===` on null or undefined values results in a TypeError.
  
- When comparing strings with non-trivial regular expressions, Lodash's `_.isEqual` might be faster than the built-in `===` operator.

**Library**

The library being used is Lodash, which provides a utility function for comparing values in a functional programming style. The purpose of this library is to provide additional functionality and clarity when working with data structures like arrays and objects.

**Special JS Feature or Syntax**

There is no special JavaScript feature or syntax used in this benchmark beyond what's typically expected for a web page running in a browser.

Related benchmarks:

_.isEqual vs === for string comparison (version: 0)

Comparing performance of: isEqual vs ===

Created: one year ago by: Guest

Jump to the latest result

isEqual

===

Suite status: <idle, ready to run>

Fastest: N/A

Slowest: N/A

Autogenerated LLM Summary (model llama3.2:3b, generated one year ago):